Smart Orgasm Equality Advice from Blogging Behavioral

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Women deserve better when it comes to our sexuality and particularly when it comes to our orgasms.  We just plain don't get enough of them in our sexual encounters. Women can orgasm. We can. When we masturbate, we can orgasm as quickly, easily and as reliably as men can. We often don't when we're with a partner, though. Somehow, women going through their sexual lives having very few orgasms compared to their male partners has just become a matter of course, a sort of unspoken accepted reality. It's actually quite an appalling and over arching problem, yet very rarely do I ever hear sex experts speak of this orgasm inequity in any real way.

Dr. Sandy Andrews, a psychologist in Austin, TX, in a September of 2010 blog post at Blogging Behavioral did though, and since I love to highlight anything I see as contributing positively to the ol' Orgasm Equality Movement, I thought I'd write about it. The post is aptly called Please Sir, I Want More because at its heart, it's about women in need of more when it comes to our orgasms...more understanding, more listening, more discussion, more truthfulness, more trying, more cultural acknowledgement, and more...well, more orgasms.

I needed to add a picture, so I just chose this one. It just says "orgasm" to me.

What I really appreciated about her post is that she is addressing the problem of women not orgasming with their partners, but she focuses not on the emotional baggage or possible medical issues that most sexperts seem to immediately go to. Instead, she focuses on the the very simple fact that women are not getting the physical stimulation they want and need in order to orgasm.

When I assess an individual’s or a couple’s sexual intimacy, one of the most common problems I see in heterosexual women is believing that their sexual preferences are neglected, ignored, or in some way not prioritized.

I further love that she grasps the complexity and depth of this problem. A resolution is not as easy as a woman's decision to boldly ask for what she wants or for a man to simply listen. Andrews acknowledges that there is more to it and that this basic problem with lack of female orgasm is a basis for larger, long-term sexual issues within a relationship.

For too many women, too much untapped potential remains. Which may help explain why so many long-term couples report the bed-dead syndrome. No sex at all. For years. Or near dead. Sex that occurs along the order of once or twice a year. A sex life in need of resuscitation.

With this in mind, I frequently encourage women to let their partners know what they want. Simple enough, right? Not at all, as it turns out. Many women report finding it difficult to approach their mates with sexual requests or to give honest feedback when their needs are not met. When, in short, they don't reach orgasm. Many women report feeling shy, awkward, and inhibited.

She goes on to tell us that even when a woman does speak up, it doesn't always work. The follow through is often short lived, or not enough. There are complications because of what her partner has learned from her past faked orgasms or from media expectations, and because of his own insecurities and feelings of awkwardness. It's a messy affair, and Andrews gives no perfect answer, but she does say something that truly needs to be said more, something I would call revolutionary, "You are not alone." Because in my opinion, we women too often think of our "problem" with lack of orgasm as an individual problem/malfunction, but it's not. It's a larger cultural problem with how we understand, teach, and depict the female orgasm, and one way or another we all , men and women alike, share in the suffering.

There are many avenues this post can take, but my main point is to inform women and men of something I don't think we hear often enough: You are not alone. Forget what so many magazines say. Sexual surveys are some of the most inaccurate -- this has been studied, too -- with people consistently over reporting their sexual frequency and satisfaction.

Don't go by what you read, or what you see in the movies or pornography (never) and certainly not what he hears in the locker room. Go by what you feel. Take an honest accounting of your sexual experience. If you're feeling dissatisfied, if you realize that your partner is not responding to your needs, don't give up on yourself.

Work on it. Read about it. Talk to your partner about it. Explain that you want to have good orgasms too, and yes, maybe even multiple orgasms. And that you want to bat closer to 1000 like he does (maybe). It's an entirely doable goal to reach orgasm close to 100% of the time.

Halle-effin'-lujah. Andrews is quite rightly pointing out that there is a clear disjunction between what we are supposed to know about ladygasms from media and cultural "speak," and what we know from our actual feelings and experiences. She is telling us to listen to those feelings and experiences honestly. She is telling us that other women are in the same boat, and she is telling us that we ladies deserve better, to be batting close to 1000 just like our men, and that it is very possible. That, my friends, shouldn't be revolutionary speak, but it is, and I'm glad she feels the need to say it.

Andrews doesn't go much into the physical details of how women can begin batting toward 1000, but she does clearly point out an important fact - that even if women tend to take longer than men to orgasm with a partner, women also tend to orgasm much quicker during masturbation. That in itself is important to know since it means that the very simple and doable act of diddling one's own clit during intercourse could serve as a reliable and quick means for achieving orgasm during most if not all sexual encounters - and, added bonus, it leaves the woman in charge of her own stimulation - which is pretty useful given that, as Andrews has already pointed out, getting the kind of stimulation one needs is not often as simple and easy as just telling one's partner. Hey, if you ask me, sometimes it's much easier to take matters into your own hands (although actually discussing it with your partner and working together to position the sex acts for the diddling could be a bit complicated, of course...)

So, I'd just like to thank Dr. Sandy Andrews. In her post she acknowledged an important problem; that we can orgasm, but yet we aren't orgasming. She also doesn't bury the injustice of this situation under vague possibilities of hormonal problems, mental blocks, or emotional barricades.  I see too much sex advice that skirt around this basic problem, and so I applaud Dr. Andrew's simple act of pointing out that women don't orgasm nearly as much as men during sexual acts, but that they can and that they deserve to. The insanity of this situation is shocking, important, and complicated, but like Dr. Andrews tells us, don't give up!